Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.
Samuel Adams, The Rights of the Colonists: The Report of the Committee of Correspondence to the Boston Town Meeting, Nov. 20, 1772.
On April 13, 1970, an oxygen tank aboard the Apollo 13 Service Module exploded, putting the crew in great danger and causing major damage to Odyssey, the Apollo command and service module, while en route to the Moon.
The coronavirus pandemic panic — called by Michael Knowles the “Dem panic” for the Democrats’ opportunistic obsession on the subject, using it to unseat Trump from power in 2020 — has been covered extensively by Paul Jacob on this site. But it’s not Paul’s main focus, so most stories just have to be left unnoticed.
But every now and then it’s good to check in on the developing story. Here is an interesting update: Ryan King, at the New York Post, offered us “CDC doctor monitoring bad COVID vaccine reactions may have deleted files, alleges Sen. Ron Johnson,” yesterday.
“Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) struggled to find records belonging to Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, the director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office,” writes Mr. King, “while trying to comply with a subpoena from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) for vaccine safety data.
In January, after becoming chair of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Johnson blasted out a subpoena for records on internal COVID-19 vaccine safety communications, which led to HHS discovering the potential discrepancies with Shimabukuro’s emails.
“Any attempt to obstruct or interfere with my investigatory efforts would be grounds for contempt of Congress,” Johnson wrote Wednesday.
Contempt of Congress is punishable by up to a six-figure fine and 12 months in prison.
The deleting of files is a common accusation, as has crossed the mind of anyone contemplating the JFK assassination or the weird world of UFOs. As the pandemic panic moves from news to history, we can expect many such accusations.
Sejamos simples e calmos,
Como os regatos e as árvores,
E Deus amar-nos-á fazendo de nós
Belos como as árvores e os regatos,
E dar-nos-á verdor na sua primavera,
E um rio aonde ir ter quando acabemos . . .
E não nos dará mais nada, porque dar-nos mais seria tirar-nos mais.
Let’s be simple and calm,
Fernando Pessoa writing under the heteronym Alberto Caeiro, O Guardador de Rebanhos (“The Keeper of Sheep”), VI — in A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe, trans. Richard Zenith (Penguin, 2006).
Like the trees and streams,
And God will love us, making us
Us, even as the trees are trees
And the streams are streams,
And will give us greenness in the spring, which is its season,
And a river to go to when we end . . .
And he’ll give us nothing more, since to give us more would make us less us.
On April 12, 1861, the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter marked the start of the American Civil War. Firing on the Union-held fort for 34 hours, the Confederate bombardment killed no soldiers in the exchange of artillery fire.
The Union garrison, led by Major Robert Anderson, surrendered on April 13, 1861, and was allowed to evacuate without loss of life.
During the evacuation on April 14, however, a Union soldier, Private Daniel Hough, was killed, and another, Private Edward Galloway, was mortally wounded due to an accidental explosion of a cannon during a salute to the U.S. flag. These are the only recorded deaths associated with the Fort Sumter incident.
Recently shared with military brass and congressional national security committees, and recently leaked, Hegseth’s Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance is, according to The Washington Post, “extraordinary in its description of the potential invasion of Taiwan as the exclusive animating scenario that must be prioritized over other potential dangers.”
While I can’t find a copy of the leaked document, The Post relates that “given personnel and resource constraints,” the United States will focus on China and “pressure allies in Europe, the Middle East and East Asia to spend more on defense to take on the bulk of the deterrence role against threats from Russia, North Korea and Iran.”
This makes enormous sense. We are already at war in Ukraine and across the Middle East, while China, the most dangerous aggressor, has been ratcheting up its bullying and threats against its neighbors whom we have pledged to defend.
Taiwan is too important — especially strategically, but also economically, and even symbolically, as an incredible democratic success story — to allow it to be gobbled up by the genocidal Chinese Communist Party regime.
Europe can step up to defend itself and is increasingly doing so. Germany has troops and tanks headed to Lithuania, the first such deployment since the Second World War.
These are serious times. Glad to have a more serious plan to address them. And to count other free countries as allies. We will need each other.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
P.S. On four separate occasions, President Biden publicly promised that the United States would come to Taiwan’s assistance militarily should China’s repeated threats to invade come to fruition, but where President Trump would stand in his second term seemed uncertain. Would he make a deal with Xi Jinping that sold out Taiwan, as John Bolton, his former national security advisor, has claimed? Bolton has been wrong before.
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The truth is, all might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they ought.
Samuel Adams, essay, written under the pseudonym “Candidus,” in The Boston Gazette (October 14, 1771).
On April 11, 1945, the American Third Army liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp, near Weimar, Germany, a camp that would later be judged second only to Auschwitz in the horrors it imposed on its prisoners.
Among those in the camp saved by the American soldiers was Elie Wiesel, who would go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.
Shown in photograph: German citizens ushered to the camp by American soldiers, post-conquest.
Or is it?
“House Republicans blocked on April 9 an effort by Democrats to force a vote on halting the reciprocal tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump,” explains The Epoch Times, “which are currently paused for three months.”
Let’s make that clearer. These now-infamous/much-debated “reciprocal tariffs” went “into effect” immediately after midnight yesterday. As Republicans “sneakily” worked to change the rules to disallow any congressional move to dissolve the president’s declared emergency — which, by Congress’s own legislation, gives the executive a great deal of latitude to change tariff rates — and Democrats moved to do just that, get rid of the “state of emergency,” President Trump put most of his tariff hikes on hold for three months.
Except for those on China — now in effect, at a rate of 125 percent.
It sure looks like Trump’s main concern is trade relations with China, not Lesotho or Israel or anywhere else. And much can be said about China’s trade policies (try selling American consumer goods in China) or respect for intellectual property. But it is the matter of constitutionality that interests me most.
Whatever the alleged merits of high tariffs, unilateral free trade, or any of these issues, these policies should not be decided by the president; the Constitution gives Congress the responsibility “to lay Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises” and “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.”
By handing the president “emergency” powers to change tariff policy in the first place, Congress has abdicated its role in setting tax policy. Republicans in the House seem gung-ho about Trump’s prerogatives. And Democrats haven’t sought to repeal the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which gives the president legislative taxing authority.
Apparently, Congress wants the president to be king.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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That no man, or set of men, are entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges from the community, but in consideration of public services; which, not being descendible, neither ought the offices of magistrate, legislator, or judge to be hereditary.
George Mason, Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776), Article 4.